The way Japan had tried to build up a modern state modelled on the West was cataclysmic.

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.

It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.

The ideal teacher student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher.

The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.

I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son "A Personal Matter," I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our "personal matter," and society.